


let us act as a cornerstone

by Tobi_Black



Series: Let Us 'verse [36]
Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars: Clone Wars (2003) - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: Rise of Empire Era - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Clone Rebellion, Gen, Post-Order 66
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-01-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:56:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22413586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tobi_Black/pseuds/Tobi_Black
Summary: Ahsoka couldn’t quite pin down where perhaps the ripples causing the current tsunamis had started, but now she was in the midst of them. Frankly, she didn’t much care about the how and when and why when she was so busy trying to keep abreast of all the hot spots in the galaxy, keeping her head above water by a breath.Obi-Wan away from Tatooine was too much in an already volatile situation, but Fulcrum had been spymaster of the Rebellion for nearly fifteen years and even Obi-Wan-shaped chaos wouldn’t be enough to drown her – and she managed.But finding out Darth Vader was Anakin? She’d need to see it with her own eyes before she drowned under the full-fledged chaos of Anakin-and-Obi-Wan-shaped messes compounded by the wrath of Darth Vader cutting through whoever and whatever stood between him and the man he’d sought for fifteen years.
Relationships: Ahsoka Tano & Darth Vader, Bail Organa & Ahsoka Tano, Fulcrum & Bail Organa, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker & Ahsoka Tano
Series: Let Us 'verse [36]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1076118
Comments: 16
Kudos: 284





	1. Chapter 1

**4 BBY**

Ahsoka couldn’t believe how much more active she’d been in the last couple of months, because things had built to a fever-pitch since she’d sent Asajj to Ilum. Nearly fifteen years of planning offensives, spy rings, counter-strategies, and being the resistance, and now in quick succession, there were whole _planets_ in open rebellion and not just _parts_ of their populations.

The news was being ruthlessly suppressed, but it couldn’t be completely. There were too many sources, too many trouble-spots rising at once screaming _no more_.

The streets of Coruscant were rioting, whole levels a warzone as they fought it out with stormtroopers, miles of gasoline set alight because of her grand-master. The city-planet was almost literally divided in two as decades, if not centuries or millennia of resentment boiled over and everyone that had been ignored, abused, treated like nothing, started shaking the foundations as they took level by level, everything from the bottom up. Every injustice delivered on them by a corrupt Senate and a heavy-handed Empire was quickly being paid in two-fold.

Spear-heading one assault was a group she’d noted before, if more for the smuggling of Force Sensitives off the city-planet and low-grade sabotage, named _Windu’s Army_. Ahsoka had thought before that it might have been someone honoring the fallen Grandmaster, but shortly after Obi-Wan’s message had gone out, who but _Mace_ _Windu_ himself would come out of the shadows leading the charge with his vaapad and a long staff.

Ryloth had thrown any ‘trooper still loyal to the Empire off-world before strong-arming any ship they could get their hands on to start freeing the rest of their system whether it be from the Empire or from slavery. The Mon Cala fleet soon supplying them with the ships they needed as Twi’lek across the galaxy that hadn’t joined for one reason or another, went after slavers and the Empire turning a blind eye to those that had enslaved them for centuries alike with a _vengeance_.

They’d reached their breaking point, gone right past it, then dug their heels in after they’d gotten a taste of freedom for the first time in centuries, after lifetimes of oppression and slavery. Winning their own planet back after such a hard struggle, against an opponent as massive and over-bearing as the Empire, because they were tenacious and refused to take anything more, gave them the drive they’d lacked before. Ahsoka thought they might have gone a bit drunk on it, releasing a collective combined fury of billions over nearly a millennia, but Cham Syndulla kept a tight handle on his people and the only ones going rogue were those tracking down slave rings to free friends and family taken and to avenge those that had died in slavery. Those ones no one seemed inclined to reign in as long as the only ones getting hurt were slavers.

Though there also was the fact that the Mand’alor was openly supplying them with weapons and men _with glee_ , that probably negated what control Syndulla had on those rogue factions.

Mandalore and Alderaan had joined forces, backing the Mon Cala fleet with well-trained, well-armed soldiers used to working in groups. Combined with the guerrilla tactics the Rebellion had been employing, now with military precision, the Rebellion was overtaking the Empire in blitz attacks, overrunning bases on the ground and shooting destroyers out of the sky.

The broadcast that had gone out confirming that to the galaxy had been _beautiful_. She’d watched as the Queen of Alderaan and the Mand’alor had clasped arms, swearing a blood oath by their shared Goddess of Vengeance and Family that the Empire would fall for what it had done to their loved ones, then called each other _vod_ , firmly aligning the two rulers together again after their people had drifted apart centuries ago.

If Tarkin hadn’t already been dead, Ahsoka would _thank_ the hard-headed militant for pushing a volatile situation because he wanted someone that he considered a threat out of the game at the earliest opportunity with the thinnest excuse, and then he’d told Leia’s adopted mother just that. Queen Organa had immediately acted by calling her people to war, demanding the death of the Empire in return.

It was perhaps the most understated detail of the whole scenario that followed, but Leia had been captured on the way to request aid from Obi-Wan Kenobi by her father, whose arrival and presence had turned the tide of the Battle for Alderaan but had been overshadowed by the arrival of the Mand’alor and his troops.

Bail had reached out to her once the battle was won, to tell her that her grand-master was on planet but wouldn’t be much longer before he left to start collecting his men from the Empire. She’d left Yavin 4 the first moment she had, but Obi-Wan had left by the time she got there – Darth Vader having shown up not a day before, and apparently all but frothing at the mouth screeching about sand and Satine as he chased after Obi-Wan.

Who had then left to protect Luke and Leia from any more of Vader’s attention while the Sith was so obviously unstable.

The _description_ of Vader left a sinking feeling in her gut, because she’d _hated_ Vader for fifteen years for killing Anakin, but _that_ sounded like _Anakin_. She’d never met anyone with such a fervent hate for sand before or since.

The former Senator had broken out the good stuff as he relayed everything Obi-Wan had told him had happened on the _Vengeance_ concerning Vader.

If she’d had suspicions before, they were nothing compared to Bail bluntly saying Leia ‘may’ have managed to stir Anakin up inside of Vader by telling her Master Obi-Wan had _loved_ the Duchess.

She’d been stunned speechless.

It made sense, the part of her that was always looking at details and planning and coldly logical as Fulcrum knew that it did. There had been strange coincidences before, but nothing that had made her think more than just _Vader was a Jedi once_.

The part of her that was still that fifteen-year-old girl who’d felt abandoned by her Master and by her Order, couldn’t believe it. Anakin had been angry, _so angry_ , by the end, but to join the Sith, to have done everything she _knew_ Vader had done, she would have once sworn was _impossible_.

The girl that had escaped from Mandalore with Rex’s and Asajj’s help, that had then spent a year traveling with them, dodging the Empire and working to find a balance between what she’d been taught and the reality that she was _angry_ and it wouldn’t go away simply by releasing it into the Force, _she_ thought it wasn’t unbelievable.

She’d left Alderaan feeling hollow, trying to reconcile that her Master could have become a Sith, _intending_ to return to Yavin 4 and her work as Fulcrum. Ahsoka had planned a route, set the course, and then had bounced from planet to planet, careful to confuse any possible pursuers without any attempt to actually return to Yavin 4.

Ahsoka couldn’t- she _couldn’t_ return to the Rebellion she’d help build, look Mon Mothma in the eye, and _tell her_ that their single greatest foe was actually Anakin, the man who was still whispered about with awe and respect as the Hero Without Fear. She couldn’t _not_ tell her though, because she knew how Anakin fought, and showing people how to counter that could save lives. It would be demoralizing though, incredibly so, and since this was not information that she couldn’t risk interception of, she would have to tell Mon Mothma _in_ _person_.

And convince her to say nothing.

She couldn’t do it – telling Mon Mothma would be _accepting_ what Bail had said about Anakin, and she needed proof that such a thing was true.

She worked and networked, and did her job, but she chased rumors of Obi-Wan – she needed her grand-master’s guidance. A part of her couldn’t believe that Anakin had become Vader unless she either saw it with her own eyes or heard it straight from Obi-Wan.

Which was of course, the moment she had the strangest sense of an echo of Anakin’s Force signature.


	2. Chapter 2

Ahsoka didn’t think twice about chasing it, reaching out through where her bond with her Master had once been, _reaching_ where she’d never dared before because Anakin had been _gone_.

<< _Master . . !! >>_

It hurt like looking in the brightest of suns only to find it was mirage, when he was _there_ but _wasn’t_.

One moment there was _Vader_ and then the next, there was _Anakin_ only there was _still_ Vader as well.

In her single-minded focus on her Master, she could _see_ the two clashing like a star and a black hole, casting out hot flashes of Light so intense in the Force as to be unmistakably Anakin before being swallowed by the Dark.

It _hurt_ to reach out to him, quicker on her approach than safe as she approached the dead planet at break-neck speed, to tear past the curtain of Dark and claw through it to that spark of Light she recognized as her Master.

_< <Snips . . ?>>_

Their bond snapped back into place like it had never been gone, and she was breathless as she breached the thin atmosphere.

_< <I’m coming, Skyguy, and I won’t leave you again.>>_

Then she was leaping out of her ship without a second to spare, running full-tilt to where she could see Vader standing amongst rubble, his back to her and helmet gone.

Her lip curled to bare the sharp teeth of the Togruta as she ignited her lightsabers and snarled.

“ **VADER!!** Where is Anakin?!”

A red lightsaber snapped up to catch her white twin blades as Vader turned to meet her.

Yellow-tinted blue met blue-ringed yellow.

A scarred lip, skin stretched and an awful red from cheek down to bellow the black collar of a dark-robed Vader, curled.

“Anakin was weak. He is dead.”

Only- only those wide blue eyes belonged to _Anakin_.

She faltered, taking a step back instead of pressing forward, because the face was older, scarred and burned, dark blonde hair just starting to grow back in, but she could see standing in front of her was Anakin. In front of her was a Dark, shadowed presence in the Force though, nothing like the bright one she’d known her Master as.

Ahsoka shook her head, refusing to believe the man – she couldn’t call him Anakin, even if the part of her always working as Fulcrum acknowledged he _was_ and he was also _Vader_ – “No- no, he isn’t. I _felt_ him just now. He can’t be dead.”

“He is.”

Her eyes snapped open and they were more yellow than blue, her voice filled with fury.

“Then you killed him and stole his face, Vader.”

She raised one hand, flicking her wrist to lift him up.

“Now I’ll avenge him.”

He struggled, before his eyes narrowed and he abruptly dropped, hand raising to match her.

“Join me or die, Ahsoka.”

The Force clashed around them, between them, before Ahsoka hastily rolled and sprung up at Vader’s side, ‘saber swinging.

Twist, spin, slash. Duck.

Ahsoka didn’t hesitate to use her speed and agility to push Vader on the defensive, using all of her anger and grief to fuel her strikes.

He matched her hit for hit.

“Why do you do this? He died long ago. You can live if you just join me.”

The Dark whispered promises to her, that her Master waited for her in the Darkness, and together, they would be unstoppable. _Together_ , they could take on the Emperor and avenge all of their fallen.

She shoved him back, sending him skidding a body length.

“My loyalty is to _Anakin Skywalker_ , not _Darth Vader_.”

Vader faltered, nearly not getting his ‘saber up in time for her next strike.

He rocked back one step, then another and another beneath her flurry of vicious swings.

She hardly noticed how a little more yellow faded from his eyes to leave him with a thick ring of blue, her lip curled, snarling. Ahsoka wanted Vader _dead_. She’d wanted him dead from the moment she’d first nearly run across him fifteen years ago, but Asajj had held her back before – then she’d done her best to stay on the opposite side of the galaxy for Rex’s sake before she _actually_ gave him a conniption.

Right now, she was too _angry_ to back down and retreat.

“Snips?”

She shoved him back with the Force, slamming him into a jutting rock hard enough it cracked.

And she didn’t let up, pushing him back as the rock cracked further, giving beneath his back.

“Snips!”

Her lip curled viciously, showing in full all of her predator’s teeth.

“Don’t call me that! **You** have no right!”

Vader deactivated his ‘saber, face a snarl before he flung it away.

“ _Snips!!_ Listen to _me_!”

Suddenly, Vader faded from her senses, and in the Force, all she could sense was _Anakin_ , shadowed and a bit dimmer than before, but undoubtedly her Master.

Their bond crackled to life, flooding with relief and hesitance and guilt and regret. Almost disbelievingly, Anakin’s voice was soft in the back of her mind.

 _< <Snips, you came _back _. >>_

Ahsoka dropped her ‘sabers and ran.

There was a hesitant smile on his face, but before he could get a warning from the Force – who she got the sense was majorly pissed at him, and seemed to have no inclination to warn him for this – she pulled back her fist and slammed it into his jaw.

“You fekking _bastard!_ ”

Then she pulled him into a bone-crushing hug, bodily lifting him off the ground, tears in her blue eyes.

“I missed you so much, Anakin. I thought you were _dead_. Apparently, you just _Fell_ , but you know what, I’m going to drag you back into the Light if it _actually_ kills you.”


End file.
